Squirrelmeister

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Tongues were temporary, purposeful, intelligible languages, not an ongoing private prayer language or continuing gift in the church today.

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So, the Bible itself clearly supports the cessationist view and the view that this wasn’t some gibberish trancelike incantation.

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How does what you said square with the first part of 1 Cor 14?

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1Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. 2For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.

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By the way, thank you for your post. I learned something from you even though I didn’t agree completely with you.

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Ordinarily I'd stand with the Constitution, but IMO Islam is a Death Cult.

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Does Islam use a torturous murder device as its main symbol? Do the tenants of Islam wear the symbol of that torture device around their necks on little chains? Are the Muslims saved because of the death of their god-man? Do Muslims believe their god-man will return to kill all the unrighteous?

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Any religion that tells you to kill and enslave anyone that is not one of you?

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Can you guess these scriptures? Hint: they aren’t from the Quran.

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Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

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Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man… But all the young girls … keep alive for yourselves

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As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you. You may then bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever.

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When you are proven wrong (like the alleged irreconcilable contradiction of Ex 20 vs Ex 34)

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You proved yourself retarded, making up whatever you like in your head while rejecting the plain meaning and context.

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It’s a joke.

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Ok Mr. young earth creationist dinosaurs on the ark guy.
:rotflmao:

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God doesn't exist, at least not in the form of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful entity.

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That's a pretty lofty claim.

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No, it’s reasonable. There’s certainly no evidence of such a thing, even in your Bible.

In the Bible, your gods (Elyon and Yahweh) don’t know everything. They make mistakes, experience regret, have to send angels to scout for them, bargain with the patriarchs based on their limited knowledge, and more. They don’t love all people, as evidenced in the Canaanites they demand the Israelites slaughter, and they kill off the entire Egyptian army who would have presumably converted to Yahwism after seeing his power. But they (at least Yahweh) ain’t all powerful as he wasn’t able to defeat the Canaanites with iron chariots nor was he able to defeat Chemosh and the Moabites.

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The God of the Bible does exist. The evidence is all around us.

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The complete opposite is true and you are living in a fantasy bubble.

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That God is a perfect, immaterial, and unbounded spirit consisting of one nature in three persons. The second person of this one God is Jesus Christ--God in the flesh. Jesus is God who entered into creation to be a representative and substitute for humans made in His image who fall into sin and cannot stand before a holy God on our own. Jesus obeyed the requirements of obedience for us and died on the cross to bear the punishment that we deserve. In doing so, He procured eternal life for those who receive it by faith.

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Simply baseless assertions.

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There is a God, and He created you and sent His Son to die so that you and I could be forgiven for the offenses we give to Him through our sinful/lawless behavior.

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Hogwash.

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the most evil act ever to occur was the unjust death of God's only son, Jesus Christ.

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It’s good to see you admitting that your God does evil. So He creates evil and carries out evil actions. He’d be evil if he was real.

And I thought we’ve been through this before, Foo. Why do you keep calling Jesus God’s only son? Why not just use “unique” or “one of a kind” which is the proper English translation of monogenes? You can use the term “unique” while still acknowledging all the other divine sons of God who live or came from the heavens such as in Genesis 6, Deuteronomy 32, and Psalm 82.

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God allow evil for good reasons, including His own glory

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A little psycho don’t you think? And narcissistic.

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The problem you, as an atheist, have to contend with, is the existence of evil without the existence of God.

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There is no problem, and the premise of the statement is moot as your God doesn’t exist and we have no evidence for any supernatural deity’s existence.

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If you do not have an omnipotent law-giver that provides an objective standard for good and evil, then "evil" is merely an opinion rather than an objective reality.

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Evil is subjective. That’s why they have this whole area of study called “Ethics” and “Philosophy”.

And damn Foo we’ve been over this time and time again and you keep repeating your lies. I’ve showed you many times there is no objective standard for good and evil contained within the Bible. Should Christians follow the Torah or reject it? It depends on which epistle or gospel you are reading. Should we punish children for the crimes of their parents? It depends which OT scripture you are reading. Should we use eye for an eye justice, or should we turn the other cheek? Depends which book or gospel you are reading. Should we murder innocent women, children, and babies or should we treat all neighbors with respect and dignity? It depends which book or gospel you are reading. Should you do whatever God tells you to do or not? David found out the hard when when he did exactly as God commanded and then was punished for it by God killing his innocent subjects. :lol:

There’s no objective moral truths in the Bible. Just stop it.

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Perhaps I should clarify. I’m all about works. Without them- you probably are not in good standing. That said, your works are not what “saves” you- they are evidence of your “salvation”

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But that is only a Pauline position, and it sounds like you are repeating Foo’s apology. The gospel authors rebuke Paul over and over. Good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life? Keep the commandments, sell all your stuff and give the money to the poor, and follow me. In Matthew 7 Jesus says not everyone who believes in him - calling Lord, Lord - will be saved, but only those who keep the commandments and do the will of his Father in heaven. How can you ignore all of that? Jesus himself, not Paul, is literally saying it’s not enough to believe, but you have to do good deeds and your actions have consequences.

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Foo is good. You just genuinely hate the man- because he doesn’t cut you any slack

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I dislike him because he’s a passionate idiot. He tries to argue that taking a staff and not taking a staff is the same thing. He’s a lunatic.

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The sources are ridiculously late (200-300 years), the Quran screams “I’m man made,” and even the “early” sources are so vague.

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Ok great, now if you could apply that same skepticism, evidence, and logic, to a certain other someone, then we’d really be cooking! :lol:

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They serve the doctrine of demons. It’s well documented (and later Muslim apologetics deny) that even Muhammad believed he was speaking to demons.

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Fun fact: until Christianity really kicked off in the 4th century, the Greek word “daimon” simply meant a supernatural spirit being and was used interchangeably with “theos”.

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Good question. Probably for the same reason He hasn’t set the Jews, the Hindus, and the atheists straight. We all love a good plot twist

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Well shame on him if he has the power and authority to show people and he doesn’t. The Jews, Hindus and Atheists don’t “reject” him as Foo would say, we simply don’t believe in his existence. All he’d have to do is show his existence. The Jews and Hindus and Muslims really do want to believe in something,.. give them the “correct” thing to believe in and they’d jump on it.

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They take all the miracles of the Bible, and then add crap like “Muhammad flew to the moon on a donkey and split it in two and then sewed it back together.“

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Damn. :lol: but you know it doesn’t say any of that crap, right? But you are OK with Paul flying up to the third heaven, and Elijah riding a flying chariot with horses of fire up into heaven on a whirlwind, and the talking donkey of Baalam?

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There’s your answer to the question of why we keep letting them in.

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Maybe we shouldn’t take that chance. Maybe I’m wrong about that? :lol: too much to risk it.

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Listen to yourself. So full of confident faith. 2 Peter was written around 67 AD.

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:rotflmao:

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You need to believe that God doesn’t exist in order to justify your position.

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There is no need. My position is justified by the evidence. The Bible says we are on a flat disc with a solid crystalline dome on top holding back a sky ocean and it’s all 6000 years old. What we know about actual reality dispels all those silly myths.

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I hope you have a great thanksgiving.

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Same to you, my friend. :cheers:

ETA:

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15And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

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So the author of 2 Peter is referencing a corpus of Paul’s letters, which weren’t collected, published, and distributed for the first time by Marcion of Sinope until about 140CE. There are many indicators that 2 Peter was written around 150CE but this is one of the strongest pieces of evidence.

I have argued many times on here that Christianity started out as a celestial Jesus coming down from the highest heaven and being killed in the lowest heaven by the archons of this aeon. This was the Jesus of Paul - never on earth, and only known through revelations/visions and through reinterpretations of Old Testament scripture. The gospels telling tales of Jesus on earth, all written post 70CE and some edits approaching 200CE, were mythical tales meant to convey deeper meanings, exactly as the Egyptians wrote the gospels telling tales of Osiris dying on earth to convert new initiates while the mature knew the “reality” of the celestial Osiris who died in heaven.

From Plutarch De Iside et Osiride 358C:

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For Osiris does not die as a god in the true sense; rather, whatever parts of him cannot escape the air and remain in it, these Isis collected and put together and mingled in men’s minds in the form of a mythic tale, making of every death an image and symbol of eternity.

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And in 359C:

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Many people think that Osiris is buried in the earth and rises again … but those who have a deeper knowledge say that the stories told about him are not events that happened at one time, but are symbols of the powers and changes that occur in the universe.

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So there’s precedence a few skips away from Jerusalem where a cult invented a story of something celestial taking place on earth. That’s a pretty good established prior probability that that kind of thing was going on.

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orthodox churches disagree with one another as much as they do the universal church. The Holy Spirit has moved several orthodox churches to return to communion with the Holy See led first by Peter not a patriarch.

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I see my joke went right over your head.

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Islam is a works based religion- the opposite of Christianity.

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:lol: Christianity for the vast majority of its adherents on earth is a works based religion too. It’s only a minority based in the American South think they don’t have to do shite but believe in Jesus.

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The only problem with Christianity is that most of its adherents don’t actually follow Christ’s teachings.

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Like Foo, who rejects Jesus’ teachings in favor of Paul (Simon Magus)… the “Jew” who rejects the Jewish Law. That dumbass doesn’t even see the hypocrisy. All of the stuff Jesus said to do in his sermon on the Mount, Foo throws that shite in the trash.

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The biggest problem with Islam, is that they do follow the teachings of Muhammad

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PS, this may come as a surprise, but the evidence strongly leans towards Mohammed being a fabricated character that they used to justify the Arab conquest of the Middle East and North Africa by saying “look we have this book from this prophet who talked to Allah’s messenger that told us we have to conquer the Middle East and North Africa.”

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If Christians were as good at being Christians as Muslims are at being Muslims, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

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Those people are devout and they want to serve the invisible man who walks on the dome of the firmament. They want to believe, and do. Why wouldn’t the one true God set them straight, if he existed?

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They are indoctrinated from birth

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Sounds like others I know who aren’t Muslim.

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They don’t assimilate. Everywhere they go, they out-breed and subjugate the natives

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That’s our problem. We are the dumb ones who let them all in and have them welfare.

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They’re also the dumbest people on earth- largely due to inbreeding

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That seems like a comment a bit out of character for you. :lol:

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If you’re counting on them changing, I suggest you do a brief study of their history.

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Look, I’ve been to the Middle East a handful of times for work and have worked here with guys from probably every country in North Africa. The educated well to do ones are mostly like me are lean towards atheism. They don’t want to proclaim themselves to be atheist publicly, like me, because it has social consequences. One of them recently told me he has no idea if Allah exists but that he has to believe in something (as I am presenting myself to be an open-minded Christian). I firmly believe that after several generations of educated Muslims with high standard of living like ours, they’ll definitely drop the radicalism and they’ll begin to drop Allah altogether, as western Christians have already begun to do over the last couple of generations.

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Take a trip to Dearbornistan.

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I’m good, thanks though :lol:

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48 mosques have been built in Texas in just the last two years. They are a cancer. An extremely dumb, but highly motivated cancer. They’re not interested in science, education, or improved (by our standards) standards of living.

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That is unfortunate, but why are we letting them in?

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Paul’s letters came 20 years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. I’m pretty sure that by the time the NT was being written, the writers understood what Jesus was saying all along: BE ready. 2 Peter chapter 3 (among many others) makes this abundantly clear.

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That’s an apologetic way to explain away what the text says, but I don’t get distracted that easily. Paul’s letters and the gospels are crystal clear that they believed some of their followers wouldn’t die before the general resurrection. 2 Peter was written mid second century by someone pretending to be Peter in order to fool well meaning guys like you 1800 years later.

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Sound familiar? This was likely written 30 years after the resurrection. Last days?

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Well you’re allowed to believed whatever you want but your being kind of Muslim-y towards this letter. Most scholarship I’ve read on this topic shows that the preponderance of evidence is that 2 Peter not only is pseudepigrapha but it also the very last book of the NT to have been written, and dates to “at least” the mid to late second century. I’m not taking what they say on faith because I want to believe one way or another. No, I’ve poured through the evidence myself - the evidence they point out in their scholarly works.

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We both have faith

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No, only one of us has faith.

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You want to believe in abiogenesis, for example.

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I don’t “want” to believe anything in particular, except what is evidently real and true. Abiogenesis may or may not be true. Whether it is true or not has no bearing on the Bible, which is completely mythical and contradictory to known truths of our reality.

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You have faith that science will solve this problem

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PS, science isn’t my “god”. No faith.

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You also want to believe that the Christian God doesn’t exist

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It’s not that I want to or don’t want to believe. I know with certainty that the mythical creatures known as El Elyon/ton Theon, Yahweh/Jesus/Logos/Melchizedek, and the rest of them are figments of man’s imagination. Sorry.

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Thanks for clearing that up.

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:cheers:

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Did you see my earlier post (in this thread, page 11) about how Islam is taking over? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

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Not sure if I did but I can tell you Islam taking over isn’t good. Their religion is like Christianity from 500 years ago. They would kill all of us if they could.

I do think as their standard of living improves over time and their science education improves (both things are kind of hand in hand) that they will become less and less religious and eventually “lose their faith” as is happening in Europe and North America. And that will be a good thing.

Will it change human nature so that we won’t be fighting over natural resources? No.

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ETA: what I thought I’d covered was the imminent versus non-imminent aspect of the rapture. Not the resurrection, body aspect.

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One thing I can’t understand is that Paul’s letters, specifically 1 Thes 4, is proof that the earliest Christians believed the end of the world and the general resurrection would happen “very soon” and even in their own lifetimes. Jesus tells his followers the same thing in the gospels. They were living in the “last days” and “last hours”.

It’s been 2000 years! Knowing what you know, why would you still believe in it if you weren’t kind of brainwashing your own self into believing it just because it’s what you want to believe?

The only thing I want to believe is what is real, historical, verifiable, and factual. Sometimes the truth sucks, but it is what it is.

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And somehow you think it’s important that Egyptians said it before? Does it make him quoting Christ in that instance any less ironic?

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I just raised the point due to someone possibly trying to pass off “Jesus” or the gospel author as inventing a profound philosophical idea as the golden rule. I thought it needed some added context that the golden rule was in use 2000 years before Jesus and that Jesus didn’t invent it (if he even really existed as a historical person).

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Cool gotcha moment……. I guess? Did you slap your knee and say got eem as you typed that?

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Take it any way you want. I’m just adding context where it was needed so that more people can better understand their own reality.